Great Expectations Selfies!

At the request of an awesome teacher, Mrs. Dickey, I took the opportunity to teach two 9th Grade English classes at Deep Run High School. Yes, HIGH School. I had to put aside some of my “Elementary Teachiness.” I definitely didn’t put away the fun in the classroom, but the “Clap once if you can hear me, Clap twice if you can hear me” and “Everyone give me two, big, quiet thumbs up when your ready” would have surely brought some huge eye rolls…

Mrs. Dickey’s 9th Grade English classes are reading the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. To have the students work on their characterization and build communication and collaboration around different chapters of the book, Mrs. Dickey and I had the students create “Great Expectations Selfies” on different characters in the book at different times in the book.

Before the lesson, the students researched through the book for the character and point in the story they wanted to create. Click here for some of the scenarios. They brainstormed their character’s user name, comment, and hashtags they would use. Doing this ahead of time using the Assignment Planning Document made creation day much easier because the students only had to focus on searching for the two pictures, editing to creating the selfie, and adding the information for the text boxes. The students used the same ActivInspire Template I used for my Historical Selfie and Animal Selfie Project. My favorite part of the entire project was having the students post their finished projects to their Class Blog. The students had to write a brief description of their selfie that explained what is going on in that scene and include the chapter in which it occured. They also have to vote for the best Great Expectations Selfie Project explaining why they thought it was the best. The selfie receiving the most votes wins this very fashionable #Selfie Shirt!